Level up your app

Level up your app

Reviewers on the app store are ruthless. They don't care who you are. If they don't like your app they will give it a poor rating and review. Typically this is because they don't understand the app, the app doesn't do what they want, the app crashes, or the server is down. These are all avoidable issues! If the app is crashing or the server is down, you should be the first to know - and respond with fixing it. If the users don't understand how to use the app you should uncover this and change your UI. However, in our experience many companies don't.

Let's us help you level up so that your app and server are always up and running and your users understand and enjoy your app.

Level 1 - CONTINUOUS monitoring

Install a crash logger in your app. The responsibility of the crash logger is to report back to you whenever an app crashes in the wild and provide the information necessary to reproduce the crash so that you can fix it. It also gathers information in a database and provides a list of top occurring crashes helping you to focus on the most important ones.

Install a server monitor in your app, or elsewhere. The responsibility of the server monitor is to analyse the network traffic to the server and measure response time and up-time. This will alert you when the server goes down, and also tell you which server endpoints is taking too long to execute - effectively what causes the app to feel slow.

LEVEL 2 - Usability testing

Install anonymous user analytics in your app. The responsibility of user analytics is to track the behavior of the user as it's using the app. This will show which parts of the app are used and which are not. It will give you the conversion rate from one page to the next and let you pinpoint problem areas. Change the UI and measure again.

Perform usability testing sessions for your app. Write a script and have users follow it and try to complete the tasks it describes. Film this and have the users describe what they think and feel as they are testing. Test your on-boarding with a set of fresh users and test more complex tasks with experienced users. Fix the UI and test again.

LEVEL 3 - CONTINUOUS DELIVERY

Set up automatic building of your code for each commit and alert on failures. Also setup automatic app package delivery for each commit. This makes it possible for beta testers and other interested parties to test the latest version of the app. Use the same packages when publishing in the app store.

Move to sensible branching strategy for your code repository with at least two branches. Set up automatic testing and continuous integration from the less stable to the more stable branch. The tests are either unit tests or UI tests and if a commit fails to pass the tests it's held back. This ensures you always have a high quality stable branch.

LEVEL 4 - PERFORMANCE profiling

Run your code through statistical analysis to pin-point dead code, unused resources, deprecated code and a long list of other errors. Fix the ones that make sense. Turn on strict-mode and run your app manually through it's paces. Go through the found issues and fix them.

Profile performance critical parts in your app, for example when scrolling through a long list, and find the bottlenecks in your code. Optimize the code. Track memory usage over time. Make sure the app doesn't leak or run out of memory as you use it.

we can help

This might sound complicated and costly, but you have to think of the return of investment. These activities guarantee you a better app, which again results in happier users and higher ratings. If you need help or pointers on leveling up your app then contact us.